Anarchapulco Sponsored by Cult of Desteni Anarcho-Capitalists?

Ivan Rauscher

Anarcho-capitalist flag

(Update Aug 2017: Ken Cousens and Andrea Teale are no longer associated with Desteni. The following article serves as a record of events.)
Anarchapulco, 'the world's first and largest anarcho-capitalist conference', taking place in Acapulco, Mexico, Feb 19-21, 2016, is sponsored by Gemstone University, which is run by the Panterra Private Contract Association.

Panterra PCA's 'Overseer' is Ken Cousens and its 'Scribe' is Andrea Teale. Both have been members of Desteni for over eight years. They discuss their involvement in the group in the Dec 2014 video, Senior Destonian Hangout - An Interview with Ken Cousens.

Destonians have been called socialists, communists and fascists, but never anarcho-capitalists. 

Desteni / Equal Life Foundation's (ELF) Equal Money System would end all profit-making and competition world-wide. It is said to be a global 'system of equality' managed by a government administration.

The group's Living Income Guaranteed (LIG) 'proposal' is for the control of prices and wage levels, 'nationalization', interlinked ID and banking cards, a 'Bureau of Standards' and a welfare system; all of which the Destonians recommend should be adopted by governments of existing nation states. 

When long-standing Destonian, Anna Brix Thomsen, expresses a general disagreement with anarcho-capitalists in her video, Progressive Perspectives on Individualism vs Collectivism, states that she is in favour of government, and says, 'anarcho-capitalism is not the solution', her point of view is entirely in keeping with the message of Desteni / ELF.

Nothing published by Desteni / the ELF has ever been in support of anything even resembling anarcho-capitalism.

The ideas and language used by Gemstone University and Panterra PCA (such as 'status correction', 'Uniform Commercial Code', the US State as a 'corporation', persons as a fiction, the 'sea of commerce', references to ALL CAPS names etc) have far less in common with anarcho-capitalism than the theories and beliefs of the sovereign citizen movement.

Back in 2011, Cousens was the Chief Jury Foreman of the sovereign citizen group, the Republic for the united States of America, and wanted to help set up a new government. 

Using the name, Kenneth Scott, Cousens is interviewed by one of the confirmed speakers for Anarchapulco, Jeff Berwick, in Anarchast Ep.275 Kenneth Scott: Hidden in Plain Sight, Seeing the Real Matrix, Feb 2016. 

Cousens explains his sovereign citizen beliefs and associates them with anarcho-capitalism, but without mentioning his association with Desteni, the ELF, the Equal Money System or the LIG.

Related posts:

The Equal Life Foundation & the Sovereign Citizen Movement

The Destonian Sovereign Citizen
Desteni Discussions

Living Income Guaranteed: Nonsense Politics of the Destonians Equal Life Foundation

The Equal Life Foundation & the Sovereign Citizen Movement

Ivan Rauscher

(Update June 2017: Ken Cousens is no longer associated with Desteni. The following article serves as a record of events.)

Not Saying Desteni

FBI slide on the Sovereign Citizen Movement

The Equal Life Foundation (ELF) is the company that promotes and sells the products, course materials, marketing and recruitment schemes of the group known as Desteni. 

However, in a recent video at the Living Income Guaranteed (LIG) YouTube channel, Equal Life Foundation: Our Moral Imperatives, Cerise Poolman, who owns desteni.org, talked at length about 'the group' without ever saying the word, 'Desteni'. 

The LIG is also a creation of Desteni, and no other group or individual actively supports or promotes it. Yet in her interviews at the LIG YouTube channel with non-Destonian activists and supporters of the Basic Income Guarantee (which, unlike the LIG, is a genuine political and economic proposal), committed Destonian, Marlen Vargas Del Razo, has also never said the word, 'Desteni'.

Even the 'Self & Living' online store which sells videos by Sunette Spies (AKA the Desteni 'interdimensional portal') contains no reference to Desteni.

A key article of the ELF is called a Bill of Rights, although it is not a 'bill', as it is not being proposed to a legislature. It is merely a web document, and is essentially a bastardisation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is being used to advance the private business interests of the Desteni group's so-called 'non-profit' company, the ELF. Again, it does not mention Desteni.

Ken Cousens is not only the author of the ELF's 'Bill of Rights' but was also granted permission to invite Desteni members to join Gemstone University and Panterra Private Contract Association, organisations he runs independently of Desteni / the ELF.

This of no small significance: Cousens' ideas and beliefs and the aims of Gemstone University and Panterra PCA must therefore be regarded as being in general agreement with the aims of Desteni / the ELF. 

Cousens' background, ideas and beliefs are rooted in the Sovereign Citizen Movement.

Sovereign Law

Cousens was until recently an official spokesman for the Sovereign Citizen group, the Republic for the united States of America (RuSA), the former 'president' of which is currently serving an 18 year prison sentence for fraud.

Cousens' wife, Destonian, Andrea Teale, interviewed her husband in the video, Senior Destonian Hangout - An Interview with Ken Cousens and stated he has been in Desteni for seven years, is 'a law person, a law researcher' and his Gemstone University 'teaches people about law'.

Teale uses the term, 'Living Woman on the Land' to describe herself, which is a variation of the term, Freeman on the Land, derived from the Sovereign Citizen Movement. 

Many leaders of the Sovereign Citizen Movement are scam artists and swindlers who pose as legal experts and encourage people to take part in illegal pyramid schemes and tax fraud. They offer bogus legal advice on foreclosures and debt elimination. They claim that they can teach people how to become free of all legal and governmental constraints. (The Lawless Ones, Anti-Defamation League, 2012)

The description for Destonian, Anna Brix Thomsen's Google Hangout video of July 2014, From Mind-Controlled to Self-Governed and Sovereign Citizens reads: 

'If Governments are essentially controlling our minds, how can we start steering our own minds to become self-governed and sovereign citizens? 

'The Word Government comes from the Latin and Greek roots 'Gubernare' = control/steer + 'Mend' = mind. This essentially means that government is mind control. But what if we redefined the word government through each of us taking responsibility for 'steering' our own minds? Would it then be possible to create a system with a governing body based on Equality and Sovereignty of each individual?' 

Her question can be summarised: 'If government equals mind control then how can we control our minds enough to become the government?'

Like the Destonians, Sovereign Citizens have some odd ideas about language, government and the law.

'Sovereign citizen', David Wynn Miller, for example, is a so-called 'Plenipotentiary-Judge' and the 'King of Hawaii', who bamboozles people with gibberish and outlandish theories in expensive workshops which are often geared towards helping with foreclosures, but can do nothing of the sort.

In the USA in 2014, a survey of law enforcement officials conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, placed the Sovereign Citizen Movement in the top slot as the biggest domestic terrorist threat in the country. Sovereign Citizens have been involved in numerous violent and murderous acts.

David Wynn Miller publicly acknowledged in the New York Times that deranged killer, Jared Lee Loughner, who was found guilty of 19 charges of murder and attempted murder in Tuscon in 2011, had been influenced by reading Miller's website.

Living Words

Jared Lee Loughner quotes [from izquotes.com]

Loughner's strange use of language clearly showed that he was a keen adherent of the Sovereign Citizen Movement. The murderer was also a fan of the Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). 

Desteni members have had a lot to say about TZM, usually to try to show that its 'Resource Based Economy' is inferior to the 'Equal Money System' of Desteni. In 2011, the group's founder, Bernard Poolman, encouraged disaffected members of TZM to join Desteni.  

It is a specialty of Sovereign Citizens to concoct nonsensical legal documents. Another article by Ken Cousens is an absurd defense of Desteni written in the form of a faux legal document, a so-called 'affadavit of truth', entitled, Standing in Witness to Desteni.

Cousens' 'Walking the World System' video series for Desteni is over nine hours long. The videos referred to in the Nov 2014 post, The Destonian Sovereign Citizen, have since been removed from public view on YouTube, but copies have been made of them.

In one video he recommended to Destonians another video, The Golden Web, which posits a method of interpreting the 'hidden' meanings of words to advance very grand conspiracy theories. 

It is a method similar to the practice in Desteni of interpreting words according to how they might sound like other words, as shown in the Living Words section of the group's public forum. 

It is related to Bernard Poolman's 2007 articles such as Bernard Poolman – I, the Living Word and The Living Word in which he recommended 'redefining words' with the help of software which he claimed he had 'tested' and found could 'assist with the process' of 'self-forgiveness'. 

That same software, discussed in the recent VICE magazine article, Meet the Struggling South African Cult That Tried to Kill Demon Hitler, is now known as TechnoTutor and is sold to the public almost exclusively by members of Desteni.

The websites for Gemstone University and Panterra PCA, run by 'The Living Man, kenneth scott, of the House of Cousens', are full of language and ideas of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, but they do not mention Desteni. 

Poolman, on the other hand, always referred to Desteni, but perhaps the present day representatives of the group have in certain circumstances been avoiding using the word to try to offset the inevitable consequences of the fact that Desteni has gained a solid reputation for itself as a totally ridiculous cult. 

Maybe they are changing direction and planning on ditching the name altogether.  

Yet if the 'living words' used to represent the group and its interests are instead the Equal Life Foundation, the Living Income Guaranteed, Equal Money System, TechnoTutor and/or anything else, it makes little difference. In forging alliances with individuals from the crackpot Sovereign Citizen Movement the people who call themselves 'Destonians' are risking far more than their reputations. 

Related posts:

The Destonian Sovereign Citizen
The Equal Life Foundation is a Scam

Living Income Guaranteed is Not the Basic Income Guarantee

Public Consequences - Desteni Doomed - 7
Desteni Discussions

Living Income Guaranteed is Not the Basic Income Guarantee

Unconditional Basic Income

It could be construed that the Living Income Guaranteed (LIG) by the Equal Life Foundation (ELF) emerges from the movement for a Universal Basic Income or the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), but this would be a misapprehension. The LIG originates from the Equal Money System and the ELF is not affiliated with the BIEN.

The Basic Income is described as 'an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement'. It is generally understood to be unconditional and universal, 'at the same level, to rich and poor alike'. The LIG, however, would not be 'unconditionally provided but allocated through a means-test' as 'a social security ‘net’' for those who are 'eligible'.
Moreover, the LIG entails a 'Paradigm Shift' and wide-ranging if rather nonsensical 'Structural Adjustments' which are not part of any Basic Income proposal.

The LIG 'proposal' suggests strict controls to monitor Public Relations companies and the advertising industry – but if that were the case then it would put the ELF out of business. In its own words, the 'advertisement and public relations projects' of the ELF are not 'focused on educating the consumer and/or population in a factual manner using information relevant to the product or service being described and promoted'. The promotion of the LIG by the ELF is misleading. It uses 'psychological manipulation tactics' which do not 'truly honor the dictum of the ‘informed consumer’ making rational decisions'.

The ELF presents the LIG in such a way that it appears as if it is connected to the Basic Income movement when it is not.

LIG supporters regularly publish information that could easily create the false impression that if people support the LIG and give money to the ELF it may help to advance research carried out by BIEN-affiliated researchers and other supporters of the Basic Income. They do so by utilising the exact same terminology and frequently posting news items, videos, quotes and articles from the BIEN and about the Basic Income, as if these things have some relevance to the LIG when they do not. One example of many is the video, How to Emancipate the Precariat which discusses the book, The Precariat – the New Dangerous Class by co-founder of the BIEN, Guy Standing, in order to promote the LIG. 

At the LIG YouTube channel, the most vociferous LIG supporter and author of Eugenics is Best for All Life in Equality, Marlen Del Razo interviews Basic Income supporters (notably, Scott Santens and Nyc Labrets) about the Basic Income but without ever mentioning the ELF or the LIG in any detail or the fact that the LIG is an entirely different thing to the Basic Income; yet elsewhere she expresses the view that a universal basic income will never happen.

The ELF's so-called 'Bill of Rights' has been written by Ken Cousens, who until recently was a prominent spokesperson for the 'sovereign citizen' group, the 'Republic for the united States of America', from which he has been accused of stealing over a million dollars. Many of his ideas to do with money, the law, politics etc., are identical to the pseudo-legal conspiracy theories and beliefs of the Sovereign Citizen Movement which have been used by scam artists to con people out of money and in some cases, get them thrown in jail. Cousens is formally providing training to the ELF/LIG supporters, and while his 'sovereign citizen'-style beliefs may be relevant to the LIG such beliefs are not in any way an influence on the movement for the Basic Income.

Unlike the proposals for a Basic Income, the LIG 'proposal' is not discussed by its supporters within an actual political arena or public social forum, but only on websites run by its supporters. If the LIGgers were to openly discuss their 'proposal' with others then they would be forced to address certain pertinent issues, not least the fact that the main activity of the ELF is in marketing schemes of the group known as Desteni.

Related posts:
Living Income Guaranteed: Nonsense Politics of the Destonians Equal Life Foundation
Equal Life Foundation Trojan Horse: Living Income Guaranteed (LIG)
The Destonian Sovereign Citizen
Equal Money System Final Solution: Eugenics

The Destonian Sovereign Citizen

[Update June 2017: Ken Cousens and Andrea Teale are no longer associated with Desteni. The following article serves as a record of events.]

Several hour-long YouTube videos entitled Walking The World System, which are of talks given by Desteni / Equal Life Foundation champion, Ken Cousens, and hosted by Anna Brix Thomsen and Marlen Del Razo, were recently posted at the Desteni leadership forum along with detailed notes. They are supposed to be unlisted but currently are listed.

Cousens is the author of the Desteni Equal Life Foundation Bill of Rights and has written other articles for the group such as 'The Starting Point'.

In these videos, Ken Cousens discusses money, the law, history, the 'hidden elite', esotericism, mythology, 'the mind', arcane symbols found in corporate logos and the Bible, 'interdimensional reality' etc.; his own brand of New Age conspiracism. But the main part of his discussion consists of a repetition of the typical pseudo-legal arguments of the Sovereign Citizen Movement.

Cousens has often been a guest on Morning Liberty radio with right wing broadcaster, Robert A. Hender Jr. He appears in videos posted in 2011 as Chief Jury Foreman of the Republic for the united States of America (RuSA), which is the largest organisation in the world of 'sovereign citizens'. 

Civil rights law firm, Southern Poverty Law reports:

The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex antigovernment beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they — not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials — get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes.

The RuSA has been plagued by violence and criminality and its former leader, James Timothy Turner was sentenced to 18 years in federal custody in July 2013 for tax fraud.

The FBI regards the Sovereign Citizen Movement as a form of terrorism.

It has been widely reported that the 'sovereign citizen movement' is run by con artists who engage in scams and frauds by charging money to coach people in how to eliminate debts or mortgage fees, create fake currency, drivers plates or licenses, dodge taxes, etc.

Cousens has written a so-called Affidavit of Truth which gives some background on his involvement with the RuSA in relation to his company, PanTerra PCA.

He previously wrote a pseudo-historical 'esoteric' narrative (before Desteni, in which he suggests Andrea Teale who is now a Destonian 'channeled' Maitreya for eight years): Holographic History and the End of a Great Cycle.

His name appears in connection with a company called 'Universal Legal Network' (which has offered help with foreclosures as have many 'Sovereign Citizen' gurus) at compaintsboard.com, at pissedconsumer.com, in connection with another group called Divine Province, and at Ripoff Report he replies to certain accusations. 

Cousens' videos for Desteni / Equal Life Foundation show that he is a strong proponent of beliefs of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, and although the movement is mainly based in the USA and Canada, he now takes a more global perspective.

In the Walking the World System videos Cousens formally extends an invitation to the Destonians to join his companies, Panterra PCA and Gemstone University, the websites for which are made up of pseudo-historical and pseudo-legal notions, grand conspiracy theories, New Age word salad and sovereign citizen beliefs.

Sunette Spies and the core Desteni / Equal Life Foundation group in South Africa appear to have given Ken Cousens the official go ahead to coach Destonians in how to apply his version of sovereign citizen ideology in whichever country they happen to live.

Related posts:

Equal Life Foundation Trojan Horse: Living Income Guaranteed (LIG)

Equal Life Foundation: NPO for Equal Rights -- or Money & Food for Destonians?

Equal Money System Reptilian Channeling Cult

New Age Occultism of Desteni Equal Money System